Australian Energy Market Operator

AEMO operates Australia's National Electricity Market (NEM), the interconnected power system in Australia’s eastern and south-eastern seaboard, and the Wholesale Electricity Market (WEM) and power system in Western Australia.

AEMO operates gas retail markets in New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory, Queensland, South Australia, Victoria, and Western Australia. AEMO also operates wholesale gas markets in south-eastern Australia, those being the Declared Wholesale Gas Market in Victoria (DWGM), the Short Term Trading Market in Adelaide, Brisbane and Sydney (STTM), and the Gas Supply Hub (GSH), whose trading locations are based at Wallumbilla in Queensland, and Moomba in South Australia. AEMO also operates the Natural Gas Services Bulletin Board (GBB), and is system operator of the Victorian Gas Declared Transmission System. AEMO is also responsible for Gas Services Information functions in Western Australia.

Specification of Service Points, Zones and Segments

On 29 June 2018 the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) Energy Council (Energy Council) agreed to implement the legal and regulatory framework required to give effect to the capacity trading reform package. Under the legal and regulatory framework that the Energy Council has agreed to implement, AEMO will be responsible for:

maintaining and publishing a register of each service point (physical or notional) at or between which transportation services are (or may be) provided by the facilities that will be subject to the reform package and each park service point;

determining the backhaul service points between which backhaul auction services will be available in the DAA on single direction pipelines (or parts of pipelines).

determining the allocation of service points to the zones that will be used for both the CTP and DAA; and

determining the forward haul pipeline segments (i.e. the part of a pipeline between pipeline zones) and, where relevant the backhaul pipeline segments that will be used in the DAA.

Consultation – Draft Specification

AEMO and the GMRG have updated the specification of service points, zones and pipeline segments based on this initial consultation. The GMRG and AEMO are seeking written feedback on the second draft of the service points, zones and pipeline segments by 5pm (AEST) on 25 October 2018. Stakeholders can submit their feedback by email to the PCT inbox (pct@aemo.com.au).

Initial Consultation

GMRG and AEMO jointly prepared an initial Consultation Paper to provide stakeholders with an opportunity to provide their feedback on the proposed service points, zones and, where relevant, pipeline segments for the initial set of facilities that are expected to be subject to the reforms. The feedback received through this initial consultation process will be used to inform the draft specification of service points, zones and pipeline segments, which will be subject to a further round of consultation before AEMO makes its final determination. The draft specification is expected to be published in September with a further period of industry consultation to be carried out.